


i wanna live better days

by enbyofdionysus



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe- No Supernatural, Aromantic, Asexual Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Queerplatonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 02:34:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17034869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enbyofdionysus/pseuds/enbyofdionysus
Summary: quensty asked: I don't know if you're still taking prompts or not, but just in case: there's plenty of fics that take Jason trying to help Percy with nightmares, but what about the other way around? How do you think that'd work out?





	i wanna live better days

Despite their arguments and competitiveness, Jason considered Percy to be one of his most valued friends. They’d grown to like each other their senior year of High School before choosing to room with each other once they went to college at CHBU.

Jason technically didn’t  _need_ to live on campus; his father had enough money where he could rent his own apartment if he wanted to. But over the course of his time at the university Jason had grown to like Percy far more than he ever intended to. And so, if it meant being near to Percy, he decided to stay in the tiny room on the Long Island campus.

It wasn’t that Jason wanted to date Percy. He didn’t even want to have sex with him.

There was just something about him. They made a great team. Percy was like a star: bright and bold with ideas that, if Jason didn’t take and harness them, would die when he had his bouts of depression that even Jason wouldn’t have known about if they weren’t roommates. They’d organized several student events like that, Percy with his ideas and Jason with his persuasion and people skills to implement them.

Jason just wanted to bask in Percy’s passionate glow and be there to see his eyes light up when he talked about shark week and sea otters. And maybe hold his hand.

It was a relationship they’d been developing for five years until Percy suggested a few months back that they try platonic kissing.

“How can kissing be platonic?” Jason had asked, looking up at him over the first draft of his English Senior Seminar paper. Their room was arranged so that their beds were on opposite sides with Percy’s desk at the window at the front of the room between the two beds and Jason’s at the foot of his own bed.

Percy shrugged from where he was tossing a hacky-sack back and forth between his hands. He’d been listening to one of his marine biology seminars on his mp3 player but had paused it for one of his routine breaks. It was a study technique Jason had often utilized himself: listen to seminars for twenty minutes, taking a five-minute break, and then going back to the seminar, and repeat. 

It was great when you had ADHD, but sometimes it wasn’t enough. Percy often had to listen to his books on tape while simultaneously reading the book out loud several times to comprehend what he was reading and that was without even taking his dyslexia into consideration. Disabilities were nightmares.

“Technically, kissing being non-platonic is a cultural thing,” Percy said. “It’s only when you consider it non-platonic that it becomes non-platonic.”

“What.”

“Kissing is a natural symbol of nurturing,” Percy said. “It’s taken from the act of an adult mammal sharing its food with its young.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Right, but it’s not sexual.”

“Oh.”

“Right. So, do you want to try it?”

“With you?”

“Yeah,” Percy said, “why not? If you’re comfortable with it.”

Jason didn’t know what to think. He’d never kissed anyone before and the thought of doing it always made him anxious. His ex-girlfriend, Piper, had tried to kiss him once back in High School and he’d nearly fallen off the bleachers. “I’m not sure.”

“Okay,” said Percy, “then we won’t do it.”

Jason chewed his lip. He glanced at his paper and then back to Percy. “It’s platonic?”

“Completely platonic,” Percy agreed.

“Just friends?”

“Just friends.”

“Nothing sexual?”

“Nope.”

“Nothing romantic.”

“Nothing romantic,” Percy agreed.

And that was how they had their first kiss. It wasn’t like how Jason had expected it to be. He’d been terrified of what kisses meant for so long that he hadn’t even thought to consider what it might be like to kiss a friend. It was an awful lot like kissing his dad goodbye when he was little: light, dry, and affectionate.

“Oh,” Jason had said, surprised.

“Okay?” Percy had asked.

“That was nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Jason agreed.

And so they did it again, a little less chaste, but no less friendly. Percy’s lips felt nice on his, warm and soft.

“Still good?” Percy has asked when they pulled away.

Jason nodded.

And that was how he and Percy ended up in a queerplatonic relationship without Jason even realizing. Percy, because of his gender studies minor and participation in CHBU’s Queer Alliance, had figured out Jason’s aromantic and asexual label before Jason had. But Jason didn’t mind. If anything, it just made him feel warmer knowing that Percy listened to what he said when he was confused about himself as well as other things.

Like, for instance, when Jason mentioned he was nervous about going on Prozac.

After his mom had died in a car accident over winter break, Jason’s anxiety had gone from mild and manageable to extreme. He had had a panic attack in his Shakespeare class and went to the Health Center unable to feel his face and hands. It was when Percy woke up in the middle of the night to find that Jason had removed his mattress from his bed and placed it under the box spring to sleep on the floor that Jason figured it would be a good idea to go on medication.

Unfortunately, while the Prozac did help Jason with his anxiety, it had some side effects he wasn’t fond of. Namely, nightmares.

Horribly vivid nightmares.

Jason hadn’t even expected them. Nightmares weren’t a side effect on the label.

He was sleeping peacefully, his mattress now back on his box spring across from Percy’s own dorm bed. And then, just as his bladder began to wake him up and draw him out of deep sleep, the dream came. There was nothing. And then, all of a sudden, there was something: a winter road with a car flipped on its side.

Jason stepped forward in the snow, feeling the crunch of the salt under his boots and the slick slide of the slush. He could smell pine and cinnamon from the shops, could smell the gasoline and smoke from the car.

It was his mom’s car, a red BMW, now demolished on the side of the road.

There was someone inside of it, in the driver’s seat, pressed down against the pavement by gravity. The body belonged to a woman and Jason knew without looking at her face that it was his mom. He watched her move, just the slightest bit, and, in the dream, Jason thought:  _I need to call Thalia. Mom isn’t dead._

Then the woman’s head turned.

And her eyes were all wrong.

Jason’s blood froze.

 _That isn’t mom_ , he thought.

The body moved.

 _Run before it gets you_ , his brain said.

And he did.

Or, at least, he tried.

**

Jason woke screaming.

Someone was holding him and he was sure, in the heat of the moment, that it was the creature wearing his mom’s skin. But, after the initial sleep haze cleared and Jason recognized the Jack Kerouac poster on his wall, he realized the arms around him were far too strong to belong to his mom’s body and far too dark-skinned.

Jason gave a shaky breath. “Percy?” he asked.

Percy’s grip on him lessened. “Yeah.”

Jason pulled away from him, but only to turn to face him. Percy looked tired, but also very much awake. His arms were locked around Jason’s body like tentacles.

“Are you okay?” Percy asked.

Jason opened his mouth to speak but found that he couldn’t. He shook his head and, despite his best efforts, teared up. He hated crying, always had.

“Hey,” Percy said, voice soft. “Hey, hey. Come here. Here, I got you. I got you.”

Jason pressed his face to Percy’s chest, taking in the musky scent of his t-shirt, stale with sweat and sleep. There was still the leftover scent of his cologne from earlier in the day. Jason drank it all in, anything that would take him away from that nightmare, from that street corner, and back to the present, to reality.

Percy’s fingers found his hair and they ever-so-gently brushed through his locks and over his scalp. “Do you want to talk about it?” he asked.

Jason shook his head and buried his face deeper into the fabric of his shirt. He was glad Percy had yet to work off the last of his freshman fifteen from three years ago; he was softer this way. “It was about my mom,” Jason whispered. And that was all he wanted to say. He felt, strangely enough, that by talking about that creature, that thing in his mom’s body, would make it real.

Percy said nothing, but continued to stroke his hair. And then slowly, ever so slowly, Jason began to relax again. He settled against Percy’s chest, his stomach pressed into Percy’s waist, and then finally – exhausted, relieved, safe – Jason fell back to sleep.


End file.
